Not even national news coverage is slowing the pace of deadly accidents on the Las Vegas Strip, and this time it involves a veteran carpenter and a fall.

On June 17, Lyndall Bates, 49, of Tempe, Ariz. died after a 12-ft fall at Boyd Gaming’s $4.8-billion Echelon project. The accident is the project’s first fatality, but it is the 12th construction-related death on the Strip in less than 19 months.

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    On early Monday morning, Bates was dismantling scaffolding when he fell and landed on his head, says a Clark County spokesman. Firefighters pronounced him dead at the scene. An 11-year member of the Southwest Regional Council of Carpenters, Bates reportedly tied his safety harness to a piece of scaffolding that he mistakenly dismantled, causing him to fall. The definitive cause of the accident and sequence of events isn’t certain yet. Work was temporarily halted as the Nevada Occupational Health Administration conducted an investigation.

    Tishman Construction Corp., New York City, is Echelon’s construction manager, with Las Vegas-based Marnell Corrao Associates as the prime concrete subcontractor. Bates was reportedly working on the project’s main 640-ft-tall, 4-million-sq.-ft. three-wing superstructure. Echelon is scheduled to open in 2010.

    In a joint statement, Tishman, Marnell Corrao and Boyd said: “All of our site workers deserve the safest workplace possible. ... We will continue to take whatever measures are necessary to keep them safe as this project moves forward.”

    In the past week the Wall Street Journal published a story about the continuing safety lapses and deaths in Las Vegas.

    Tishman is also construction manager for the $8.4-billion, 18.6-million-sq-ft CityCenter site, which has had six deaths over the last 16 months.